WIRED’s midterm preview highlights races where Silicon Valley money, AI policy, and the fallout from DOGE are central. In Texas’ newly gerrymandered 10th District, Republican Chris Gober—a former lawyer for Elon Musk’s America PAC who advised on DOGE’s structure—leads Rourk 48-41 in a September poll. His campaign has received $747,550 from American Mission PAC, a super PAC funded by Leading the Future, which has raised over $140 million from Silicon Valley backers including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The district also includes Grimes County, where SpaceXAI and Tesla have said they plan to open a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor “terafab.” Gober’s law firm has represented clients in a controversial New Mexico data-center campaign and defense-tech startups, and WIRED notes this is the first race in which someone directly involved with Musk or DOGE has tried to enter Congress.
WIRED also flags Arizona’s Mark Lamb, a former sheriff with ties to election-denial groups and paramilitary organizations, as likely to become the first constitutional sheriff in Congress. In Kansas, Democrat Lauren Reinhold, a former Social Security Administration worker who left her job during DOGE’s mass firings, is running an uphill race against incumbent Tracey Mann. WIRED reports no polls are available yet in either contest.
The through-line for business readers is that tech interests are trying to convert their wealth into political influence in specific races. WIRED’s selections suggest data-center siting, AI regulation, and the political fallout from DOGE will be decided in individual House and state contests, not just national debates.